123 BUKK.DING AND EXHIBITION OF PK1ZF, POULTRY 



It is necessary to give one more caution. Do not let prize 

 chickens roost too soon never before they are at least threo 

 months old ; and then see that the perches are large enough, 

 and not round on the top, but like the flat side of an oval. 

 If they leave the hen before the proper age for roosting, let 

 them have every night a good bed of nice clean dry ashes. We 

 never allowed our own chickens while with the hen to bed 

 upon straw; ashes are much cleaner, and if supplied an inch 

 deep are warmer also. To this plan we attribute a very small 

 proportion of losses, even in very severe weather. When 

 larger, straw makes a very good bedding ; but it must be 

 shaken up with a fork every night, and renewed and the floor 

 cleaned every three days. 



If a good field or other grass-run be at command, the 

 chickens will of course have it, and it will go a long way in 

 supplying all other defective arrangements. But to our own 

 knowledge some of the finest and largest fowls we have ever 

 seen have been reared in a gravelled yard, not more than 

 eighteen feet square. In such circumstances, besides the most 

 scrupulous cleanliness and good feeding in other respects, there 

 must be green food ad libitum really fine chickens cannot be 

 reared without it, their plumage in particular being of a very 

 inferior appearance, and quite devoid of that beautiful " bloom " 

 which is now indispensable to success in the show-pen. 



But with proper care, and attention to the above plain 

 directions, there should be no lack in due season of good fine 

 birds. As they grow, and get through their first moult, they 

 will be anxiously scanned ; and let the best have especial care, 

 taking out for the table all which are manifestly not up to the 

 mark, that the rest may have more attention. 



This is a point in which all beginners fail, without excep- 

 tion. They weed out and kill just a few of the worst. But 

 the rest do not look so very bad, and there is hope that they 

 may improve; and so they are kept on, crowding the yard so 



